Quotes on Small Is Beautiful

We still have to learn how to live peacefully, not only with our fellow men but also with nature and, above all, with those Higher Powers which have made nature and have made us; for, assuredly, we have not come about by accident and certainly have not made ourselves

An entirely new system of thought is needed, a system based on attention to people, and not primarily attention to goods. . . .

Work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure.

Our task - and the task of all education - is to understand the present world, the world in which we live and make our choices.

Call a thing immoral or ugly, soul-destroying or a degradation to man, a peril to the peace of the world or to the well-being of future generations: as long as you have not shown it to be "uneconomic" you have not really questioned its right to exist, grow, and prosper.

Man's needs are infinite, and infinitude can be achieved only in the spiritual realm, never in the material.

The most striking about modern industry is that it requires so much and accomplishes so little. Modern industry seems to be inefficient to a degree that surpasses one's ordinary powers of imagination. Its inefficiency therefore remains unnoticed.

Without ... the creative imagination rushing in where bureaucratic angels fear to tread - without this, life is a mockery and a disgrace.

Economic development is something much wider and deeper than economics, let alone econometrics. Its roots lie outside the economic sphere, in education, organisation, discipline and, beyond that, in political independence and a national consciousness of self-reliance.

Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology toward the organic, the gentle, the elegant and beautiful.